By the time the moon rode high, seven breaches had opened along Nargothrond's walls. Behind every gap, Elven bodies lay piled like fallen leaves.
Gimli's axe blade was chipped, and his mail coat had been split open by a troll's hammer, blood running down his thick legs. He did not yield an inch. With fewer than thirty dwarf heavy-infantry at his back, he held the northwest gap as if hewn from the rock itself.
Denethor's armor no longer showed its original color beneath the crusted blood and ash. He rested for a heartbeat against a shattered flag-pole, the half-length of his sword still lodged in the skull of an Orc at his feet.
Aragorn and Corthalion had somehow ended back to back. Their cloaks were soaked through with blood, but their swords still traced arcs of death through the press of enemies.
When the last of the Sindar arrows were gone, Corthalion drew the curved sword at his hip. Each stroke bit deep into Orc bone, sending shocks rattling up his arm.
Noldorin warriors were mighty beyond most mortals. Any one of them might cut down a dozen foes single-handed.
But here, on this scale, single combat meant little. No matter how strong the arm, no warrior could defend against blades that came from every side at once, nor see the poisoned arrow loosed from the dark. Many Elves fell not in glorious duels, but to treachery and chance.
Toward the small hours, with the sky paling only slightly to the east, the western wall finally gave way.
A score of war-beasts crashed through together. Their talons shredded Elven shield-walls as if they were paper... and then those beasts, in turn, died beneath desperate blades and blazing rune-fire.
The enemy did not care. They hurled creature after creature into the breach, trampling their own dead as they drove toward the heart of the city and the Tree that burned like a star above all.
"Hold the Tree!" Anrod's voice was hoarse with rage.
He leaped from the gatehouse, landing hard enough to crack stone, and his king's sword drove straight through a war-beast's eye. The thing toppled, but another's tail smashed into him, hurling him across the square.
He struck the paving stones with a crash that echoed through the plaza. For a moment he lay still, then the power in him flared and he forced himself upright again.
One Elf, one sword, stood between a ring of war-beasts and the Sacred Tree.
The walls were all but abandoned. Fighting had spilled into the streets, every lane and crossing choked with struggling bodies.
The Elves of light could still bring down a war-beast with a single volley... and yet just as often they fell beneath an Orc's knife in the back.
War showed its true face now, without veil or glory.
Of the ten thousand defenders who had held Nargothrond's walls at dusk, fewer than three thousand still stood.
No one knew how many enemies remained. There were still Orcs wherever one looked, filling street and square, their numbers seemingly without end.
In the east the first faint grey of dawn touched the sky. They had fought through the whole night.
The Elven line was on the brink of breaking. Even the greatest heroes were nearly spent.
Then a clear eagle-cry split the morning.
A heartbeat later, the ground itself roared. From the eastern woods burst five thousand Dwarves in full mail, helms low, shields high, a moving wall of steel. Hammers and axes flashed cold in the new light as they drove straight into the flank of the Orc host.
"It is the Dwarves of Khazad-dûm!" Gimli bellowed, suddenly finding fresh strength. He buried his axe in a troll's skull and wrenched it free in a spray of bone and black blood. "King Dáin has brought the Ironfoot host!"
The dwarven heavy-infantry hit the Orc line like a falling mountain.
King Dáin's own axe, heirloom of Durin's line, smashed plate and bone alike. Every swing cracked war-beast scales and shattered troll armor. His golden beard was clotted with black blood, yet he looked every inch the war-king as he bounded up onto a beast's back.
"My dear cousin!" he shouted across the chaos toward Gimli. "I came to haul you out of this mess!"
Almost at the same moment, golden dust rose in the west.
Zakri's five thousand Eowenrían light cavalry poured down from the hills like a storm of sunlight. Where their horses' hooves fell, Orc ranks buckled and collapsed.
Their lances formed a living hedge of steel, driving deep into the trolls' lines, ripping them open as if they were canvas.
Zakri's rune-fletched arrows punched through one war-beast's heart after another. His shout rang above the din:
"For Eowenría!"
Farther off, two more golden rivers were racing along the course of the river.
Those were the Noldor hosts recalled from the outlying marches, answering their king's summons. Their armor shone green-gold in the dawn, and the arrows on their bowstrings looked like stars about to fall upon the earth.
"Guard our home!"
Every Elf took up the cry as noble captains led them in renewed charges, smashing into the besiegers who had driven within the walls.
...
Above, a keen call answered the tumult.
The Great Eagles of the Misty Mountains stooped from the skies, their lord Sorondor at their head. They folded their wings and dove like thunderbolts into the Orc host, tearing riders from saddles, overturning siege engines, scattering the enemy wherever their shadows fell.
And in that moment, on the blood-drenched fields around Nargothrond, the tide of battle at last began to turn.